People - IMDb

1. Buster Keaton

Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, to Joe Keaton and Myra Keaton. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. In the earliest days on stage, they traveled with a medicine ...

2. Marlene Dietrich

Soundtrack | Witness for the Prosecution

Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator ...

3. David Niven

Actor | Murder by Death

His mother was the French Lady Comynyplatt Henrietta de Gacher, his father was the British Lieutenant William Graham Niven, who died in the war when David was six years old. Niven was considered a difficult child to educate and had to change schools often until he finally went to Sandhurst Military...

4. William Holden

Actor | Stalag 17

Billy Wilder proclaimed William Holden to be "the ideal motion picture actor". For almost four decades, the handsome, affable 'Golden Holden' was among Hollywood's most durable and engaging stars. He was born William Franklin Beedle Jr., one of three sons to a high school English teacher, Mary ...

5. Eva Marie Saint

Actress | On the Waterfront

Actress and producer Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924 on Newark, New Jersey. She is known for starring in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). Her film career also includes ...

6. Rod Steiger

Actor | In the Heat of the Night

Rodney Stephen Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, to Augusta Amelia (Driver) and Frederick Jacob Steiger, both vaudevillians. He was of German and Austrian ancestry. After his parents' divorce, Steiger was raised by his mother in Newark, New Jersey. He dropped out of Westside High school at...

7. Roy Scheider

Actor | Jaws

Lean, angular-faced and authoritatively spoken lead / supporting actor Roy Scheider obviously never heard the old actor's axiom about "never appearing with kids or animals" lest they overshadow your performance. Breaking that rule did him no harm, though, as he achieved pop cult status by finding, ...

8. Michael Caine

Actor | The Dark Knight

Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of ...

9. Gloria Grahame

Actress | In a Lonely Place

Gloria Grahame Hallward, an acting pupil of her mother (stage actress and teacher Jean Grahame), acted professionally while still in high school. In 1944 Louis B. Mayer saw her on Broadway and gave her an MGM contract under the name Gloria Grahame. Her debut in the title role of Blonde Fever (1944)...

10. Delbert Mann

Director | Marty

Delbert Mann, the Oscar-winning film director, was born Delbert Martin Mann Jr. in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1920. His father moved the family to Nashville, Tennesse, after taking a teaching position at Scarritt College. The young Mann graduated from Vanderbilt University, where he met his future wife, ...

11. Dennis Quaid

Actor | Far from Heaven

Dennis William Quaid was born on April 9, 1954 in Houston, Texas to Juanita Bonniedale "Nita" Quaid (née Jordan), a real estate agent & William Rudy Quaid, an electrician. He grew up in the Houston suburban city of Bellaire. He was raised a Baptist, and studied drama, Mandarin Chinese, and dance ...

12. Shirley MacLaine

Actress | Terms of Endearment

Shirley MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (MacLean), was a drama teacher from Nova Scotia, Canada, and her father, Ira Owens Beaty, a professor of psychology and real estate agent, was from Virginia. Her brother, Warren Beatty, was born on ...

13. Richard Burton

Actor | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Probably best-remembered for his turbulent personal life with Elizabeth Taylor (whom he married twice), Richard Burton was nonetheless also regarded as an often brilliant British actor of the post-WWII period.

Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in 1925 into a Welsh (Cymraeg)-speaking family in ...

14. Ed Harris

Actor | Appaloosa

By transforming into his characters and pulling the audience in, Ed Harris has earned a reputation as one of the most talented actors of our time.

Ed Harris was born in Tenafly, New Jersey, to Margaret (Sholl), a travel agent, and Robert Lee Harris, a bookstore worker who also sang professionally. ...

15. Jonathan Winters

Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Jonathan Harshman Winters III was born on November 11, 1925 in Dayton, Ohio. His father, Jonathan Harshman Winters II, was a banker who became an alcoholic after being crushed in the Great Depression. His parents divorced in 1932. Jonathan and his mother then moved to Springfield to live with his ...

16. Brad Garrett

Actor | Everybody Loves Raymond

Standing 6 feet 9 inches tall, Garrett grew up in Woodland Hills outside of Los Angeles. His father was a hearing aid specialist working in geriatrics and his mother was a housewife. Garrett spent a whopping six weeks at UCLA before going into stand-up comedy full time. He began performing his act ...

17. Frankie Avalon

Soundtrack | Grease

One of a spate of teen idols to come out of Philadelphia in the 1950s and 1960s, Frankie Avalon--unlike many of the others--actually had a musical background, having been taught to play the trumpet at a very young age by his father. As a youth Avalon performed in local clubs and theaters. He won a ...

18. Annette Funicello

Actress | Muscle Beach Party

Annette Joanne Funicello achieved teenage popularity starting in October 1955 after she debuted as a Mouseketeer. Born on October 22, 1942 in Utica, New York, the family had moved to California when she was still young. Walt Disney himself saw her performing the lead role in "Swan Lake" at her ...

19. Penny Marshall

Actress | Laverne & Shirley

Penny Marshall was born Carole Penny Marshall on October 15, 1943 in Manhattan. The Libra was 5' 6 1/2", with brown hair and green eyes. She was the daughter of Marjorie (Ward), a tap dance teacher, and Anthony "Tony" Marshall, an industrial film director. She was the younger sister of filmmakers ...

20. Kristen Schaal

Actress | Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

Kristen Schaal is an American actress, voice artist, writer, and comedian. She is best known for her roles as Mel on the HBO series Flight of the Conchords, Louise Belcher on FOX animated comedy Bob's Burgers, and Mabel Pines on Gravity Falls. Other notable roles include her appearances as a ...

21. Jim Jarmusch

Director | Paterson

Moved to New York City at the age of seventeen from Akron, Ohio. Graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in English, class of '75. Without any prior film experience, he was accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts, New York.

22. Fred Willard

Actor | Best in Show

Fred Willard radiated a unique charm that established him as one of the industry's most gifted comic actors, first coming to prominence as ambitious but dimwitted sidekick Jerry Hubbard to Martin Mull's smarmy talk-show host Barth Gimble in the devastating satirical series Fernwood Tonight (1977). ...

23. John C. Reilly

Actor | Chicago

Character actor, dramatic leading man, or hilarious comic foil? With an astonishing range of roles already under his belt, John C. Reilly has played an eclectic host of rich characters to great effect over the years, from seedy ne'er-do-wells, to lovable, good-natured schlepps.

The fifth of six ...

24. Gary Cole

Actor | Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Gary Michael Cole is an American television, film and voice actor. Cole began his professional acting career on stage at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1985. On television, he has had starring roles in the TV series Midnight Caller, American Gothic, The West Wing, Crusade, The Good Wife, ...

25. Zoe Saldana

Actress | Avatar

Zoe Saldana was born on June 19, 1978 in Passaic, New Jersey, to Asalia Nazario and Aridio Saldaña. Her father was Dominican and her mother is Puerto Rican. She was raised in Queens, New York. When she was 10 years old, she and her family moved to the Dominican Republic, where they would live for ...

26. Shelley Duvall

Actress | The Shining

Shelley Alexis Duvall was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the first child to Bobbie Ruth (Massengale, 1929-2020), a real estate broker, and Robert Richardson Duvall (1919-1994), a lawyer. At the time of her birth, her mother was visiting her grandmother in Fort Worth, though Duvall was raised in Houston...

27. Tony Curtis

Actor | Some Like It Hot

Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz, the eldest of three children of Helen (Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Curtis himself admits that while he had almost no formal education, he was a student of the "school of hard knocks" and learned from a young age that the only ...

28. Alan Arkin

Actor | Argo

Alan Arkin was an Academy Award-winning American actor who was also an acclaimed director, producer, author, singer and composer.

He was born Alan Wolf Arkin on March 26, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. His family were Jewish emigrants from Russia and Germany. In 1946, the Arkins moved from Brooklyn to...

29. Hope Lange

Actress | Death Wish

One of the most natural beauties of the 1960s with a gentle voice and personality to match, blonde Hope Lange was born in Redding Ridge, Connecticut, and performed on stage from the age of nine. She studied both drama and dance under Martha Graham, did some modeling and then worked in stock ...

30. Jerome Robbins

Writer | West Side Story

Jerome Robbins was one of the founding members of the Ballet Theatre when it was formed in 1940 portraying a variety of roles for several years before devising his own creations such as 'Fancy Free' about 3 sailors on leave in New York which marked a long association with Leonard Bernstein. With ...

31. Angie Dickinson

Actress | Rio Bravo

Angie Dickinson was born in Kulm, North Dakota, in 1931, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. L. H. Brown. Mr. Brown was the publisher of The Kulm Messenger. The family left North Dakota in 1942 when Angie was 11 years old, moving to Burbank, California. In December of 1946, when she was a senior at ...

32. Adam Scott

Actor | Parks and Recreation

Adam Scott was born in Santa Cruz, California, the son of Anne and Dougald Scott. He has two older siblings, Shannon and David. Scott has said that his brother David "looks like me but is far more cerebral and inherited the intellect of our parents," both of whom are retired teachers. He graduated ...

33. Paul Scheer

Actor | The League

Paul Scheer is a SAG Award-winning actor, writer, producer, pod-caster, and director. Scheer is a series regular on the Emmy nominated Showtime series Black Monday opposite Don Cheadle. He also is known for his role as Andre on the hit FX show The League, as well as his role of Mitch in Fresh off ...

34. Sherman Hemsley

Actor | The Jeffersons

Sherman Hemsley played characters known to be wise-cracking, "Weezy" loving, boisterous fools which America and the entire world laughed with kindheartedly. Sherman Alexander Hemsley, Air Force veteran and actor, was born on Feb. 1, 1938 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, William Hemsley, ...

35. Rita Moreno

Actress | West Side Story

Rita Moreno is one of the very few performers to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy, thus becoming an EGOT. She was born Rosita Dolores Alverío in the hospital in Humacao, Puerto Rico on December 11, 1931 (but raised in nearby, smaller Juncos, which had no hospital), to seamstress Rosa ...

36. Allison Janney

Actress | The Help

Allison Janney is an award-winning actress who has earned a solid reputation in stage productions and in many supporting roles on screen, and who more recently has become prominent by portraying one of the major characters in the popular TV series The West Wing (1999).

Entertainment Weekly magazine ...

37. Don Knotts

Actor | The Andy Griffith Show

Don Knotts, the legendary television character actor, was born Jesse Donald Knotts on July 21, 1924 in Morgantown, West Virginia, to William Jesse Knotts and the former Elsie Luzetta Moore. He was the youngest of four sons in a family that had been in America since the 17th century.

His first stint ...

38. Pamela Adlon

Actress | Better Things

Pamela Adlon comes from an acting family and began her career in television in 1983. She has appeared in many popular TV shows, including as a voice actress in a number of animated TV series including, most famously, King of the Hill (1997) for which she won an Emmy for her role as Bobby Hill.

39. Bebe Neuwirth

Actress | Jumanji

Beatrice "Bebe" Neuwirth is the daughter of Sydney Anne, an artist, and Lee Paul Neuwirth, a mathematician. Born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, she started out as a dancer. Her New York career started out in "A Chorus Line". She won a Tony Award for her part in "Sweet Charity" and two Emmy ...

40. Eva Gabor

Actress | Green Acres

Eva Gabor was born on February 11, 1919 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), a soldier. Her older siblings were Magda Gabor, an actress, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, an actress and socialite. Her parents were both from Jewish families. She went...

41. Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Director | Biutiful

Alejandro González Iñárritu (ih-nyar-ee-too), born August 15th, 1963, is a Mexican film director.

González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the Directors Guild of America for Best Director. He is also the first Mexican-born ...

42. Veronica Lake

Actress | Sullivan's Travels

Veronica Lake was born as Constance Frances Marie Ockleman on November 14, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Constance Charlotta (Trimble) and Harry Eugene Ockelman, who worked for an oil company as a ship employee. Her father was of half German and half Irish descent, and her ...

43. Jean Harlow

Actress | China Seas

Harlean Carpenter, who later became Jean Harlow, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 3, 1911. She was the daughter of a successful dentist and his wife. In 1927, at the age of 16, she ran away from home to marry a young businessman named Charles McGrew, who was 23. The couple pulled up ...

44. Carole Lombard

Actress | My Man Godfrey

Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 6, 1908. Her parents divorced in 1916 and her mother took the family on a trip out West. While there they decided to settle down in the Los Angeles area. After being spotted playing baseball in the street with the ...

45. Cate Blanchett

Actress | Carol

Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten ...

46. Jane Russell

Actress | Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her father was a United States Army lieutenant and her mother had been a student of drama and an actress with a traveling troupe. Once Mr. Russell was mustered out of the service, the family took up residence in ...

47. Rinko Kikuchi

Actress | Babel

Rinko was born Kikuchi Yuriko in Hadano just south of Tokyo. The town is known mainly for its green tea and public baths. She is the youngest of three siblings. After being scouted on the street, she began modeling in her hometown and subsequently began acting under her birth name before switching ...

48. Doris Day

Soundtrack | Love Me or Leave Me

One of America's most loved actresses was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choir master. Her grandparents were all German immigrants. She had two brothers, Richard, who died ...

49. Desmond Llewelyn

Actor | GoldenEye

Desmond Llewelyn was born in South Wales in 1914, the son of a coal mining engineer. In high school, he worked as a stagehand in the school's productions and then picked up sporadic small parts. His family would not give up their effort to prevent him from a life on stage, so an uncle who was a ...

50. Charles Bronson

Actor | Death Wish

The archetypal screen tough guy with weatherbeaten features--one film critic described his rugged looks as "a Clark Gable who had been left out in the sun too long"--Charles Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky, one of 15 children of struggling parents in Pennsylvania. His mother, Mary (Valinsky), ...

51. Otto Preminger

Actor | Stalag 17

Otto Ludwig Preminger was born in Wiznitz, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary. His father was a prosecutor, and Otto originally intended to follow his father into a law career; however, he fell in love with the theater in his 20's and became one of the most imaginative stage producers and directors. He was ...

52. Jean-Luc Godard

Director | Bande à part

Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. During World War II Godard became a naturalized citizen of ...

53. François Truffaut

Writer | La nuit américaine

French director François Truffaut began to assiduously go to the movies at age seven. He was also a great reader but not a good pupil. He left school at 14 and started working. In 1947, aged 15, he founded a film club and met André Bazin, a French critic, who became his protector. Bazin helped the ...

54. Victor Fleming

Director | Gone with the Wind

Victor Fleming entered the film business as a stuntman in 1910, mainly doing stunt driving - which came easy to him, as he had been a mechanic and professional race-car driver. He became interested in working on the other side of the camera, and eventually got a job as a cameraman on many of the ...

55. Dorothy Dandridge

Actress | Carmen Jones

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born on November 9, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruby Dandridge (née Ruby Jean Butler), an entertainer, and Cyril H. Dandridge, a cabinet maker and minister. Under the prodding of her mother, Dorothy and her sister Vivian Dandridge began performing publicly, usually in ...

56. Jean-Pierre Melville

Writer | Le samouraï

The name "Melville" is not immediately associated with film. It conjures up images of white whales and crackbrained captains, of naysaying notaries and soup-spilling sailors. It is the countersign to a realm of men and their deeds, both heroic and villainous. It is the American novel, with its ...

57. John Woo

Director | Ying hung boon sik

Born in southern China, John Woo grew up in Hong Kong, where he began his film career as an assistant director in 1969, working for Shaw Brothers Studios. He directed his first feature in 1973 and has been a prolific director ever since, working in a wide variety of genres before A Better Tomorrow ...

58. Jean Seberg

Actress | À bout de souffle

Jean Dorothy Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, to substitute teacher Dorothy Arline (Benson) and pharmacist Edward Waldemar Seberg. Her father was of Swedish descent and her mother was of English and German ancestry.

One month before her 18th birthday, Jean landed the title role in Otto ...

59. Marlee Matlin

Actress | CODA

Marlee Beth Matlin was born on August 24, 1965 in Morton Grove, Illinois, to Libby (Hammer) and Donald Matlin, an automobile dealer. She has two older brothers. Her family is of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent.

Marlee lost much of her hearing at the age of eighteen months. That did not stop...

60. Chloë Grace Moretz

Actress | Kick-Ass

Moretz is best known for her work in the sci-fi thriller series The Peripheral, created by Scott B. Smith; the Mattson Tomlin-directed sci-fi thriller Mother/Android; Neil Jordan's thriller Greta; Roseanne Liang's Shadow in the Cloud, which claimed the Midnight Madness People's Choice Award at the ...

61. Gene Tierney

Actress | Laura

With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting ...

62. Jennifer Beals

Actress | Flashdance

Jennifer Beals is an internationally renowned actress who has over 90 credits to her name, including critically acclaimed feature films and some of the highest rated television series to date. Beals is currently executive producing and returning as a lead cast member in the revival of her hit ...

63. Jane Horrocks

Actress | Life Is Sweet

Jane Horrocks is an actress internationally known as the zany and droll Bubble in the award winning British television sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (1992). She's also remembered as Miss Irvine, an evildoing witch-turned heroine in one her earliest films, The Witches (1990). She received a Golden ...

64. Jeremy Renner

Actor | The Hurt Locker

Jeremy Lee Renner was born in Modesto, California, the son of Valerie (Tague) and Lee Renner, who managed a bowling alley. After a tumultuous yet happy childhood with his four younger siblings, Renner graduated from Beyer High School and attended Modesto Junior College. He explored several areas of...

65. Anna Kendrick

Actress | Up in the Air

Anna Kendrick was born in Portland, Maine, to Janice (Cooke), an accountant, and William Kendrick, a teacher. She has an older brother, Michael Cooke Kendrick, who has also acted. She is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent.

For her role as "Dinah" in "High Society" on Broadway, Anna Kendrick was...

66. Larry Wilmore

Writer | The Bernie Mac Show

Larry Wilmore was born in Los Angeles and grew up in suburban Pomona. He graduated from Damien High School in La Verne in 1979. He studied theatre at California State Polytechnic University but dropped out because he wanted to get his Actors' Equity Association card and begin his career as a ...

67. Jake Johnson

Actor | Safety Not Guaranteed

Jake Johnson (born Mark Jake Johnson Weinberger; May 28, 1978) is an American actor, comedian and director, most commonly known for playing Nick Miller in the Fox comedy series New Girl opposite Zooey Deschanel, for which he has received a Teen Choice Award nomination among others. Johnson also ...

68. Mark Duplass

Actor | Safety Not Guaranteed

Mark Duplass was born on December 7, 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), Creep (2014) and The One I Love (2014). He has been married to Katie Aselton since August 26, 2006. They have two children.

69. Katrina Bowden

Actress | Tucker and Dale vs Evil

Katrina Bowden (born September 19, 1988) was raised in Wyckoff, New Jersey. She attended the now-defunct Saint Thomas More School in Midland Park, New Jersey, for her grammar and middle school education. She later attended Immaculate Heart Academy in Washington Township, New Jersey.

In 2006, Bowden ...

70. John Hurt

Actor | Nineteen Eighty-Four

One of stage, screen and TV's finest transatlantic talents, slight, gravel-voiced, pasty-looking John Vincent Hurt was born on January 22, 1940, in Shirebrook, a coal mining village, in Derbyshire, England. The youngest child of Phyllis (Massey), an engineer and one-time actress, and Reverend ...

71. Raoul Walsh

Editor | The Birth of a Nation

Raoul Walsh's 52-year directorial career made him a Hollywood legend. Walsh was also an actor: He appeared in the first version of W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain" renamed Sadie Thompson (1928) opposite Gloria Swanson in the title role. He would have played the Cisco Kid in his own film In Old Arizona ...

72. Douglas Fairbanks

Actor | The Thief of Bagdad

Douglas Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman in Denver, Colorado, to Ella Adelaide (nee Marsh) and Hezekiah Charles Ullman, an attorney and native of Pennsylvania, who was a captain for the Union forces during the Civil War. Fairbanks' paternal grandparents were German Jewish immigrants, ...

73. Norman Jewison

Director | Jesus Christ Superstar

Norman Jewison was an award-winning, internationally acclaimed filmmaker who produced and directed some of the world's most memorable, entertaining and socially important films, exploring controversial and complicated subjects and giving them a universal accessibility. Some of his most well-known ...

74. Michael Haneke

Writer | Caché

A true master of his craft, Michael Haneke is one of the greatest film artists working today and one who challenges his viewers each year and work goes by, with films that reflect real portions of life in realistic, disturbing and unforgettable ways. One of the most genuine filmmakers of the world ...

75. Max Linder

Actor | Seven Years Bad Luck

Although all too frequently neglected by fans of silent comedy, Max Linder is in many ways as important a figure as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, not least because he predated (and influenced) them all by several years and was largely responsible for the creation of the classic ...

76. Louis Malle

Director | Au revoir les enfants

Louis Malle, the descendant of a French nobleman who made a fortune in beet sugar during the Napoleonic Wars, created films that explored life and its meaning. Malle's family discouraged his early interest in film but, in 1950, allowed him to enter the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies ...

77. Stanley Kubrick

Director | 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would ...

78. Kathleen Turner

Actress | Romancing the Stone

Kathleen Turner was born June 19, 1954 in Springfield, Missouri, to Patsy (Magee) and Allen Richard Turner, a U.S. Foreign Service officer. She graduated from American School in London in 1972. After the death of her father, the Turner family moved back to the United States where Kathleen later ...

79. Yul Brynner

Actor | The King and I

Exotic leading man of American films, famed as much for his completely bald head as for his performances, Yul Brynner masked much of his life in mystery and outright lies designed to tease people he considered gullible. It was not until the publication of the books "Yul: The Man Who Would Be King" ...

80. László Kovács

Cinematographer | Easy Rider

László Kovács was born on May 14, 1933 in Cece, Hungary. He is known for his work on Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), Ghostbusters (1984) and Copycat (1995). He won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC in 2002. He was married to Audrey. He died on July 22, 2007 in Beverly Hills, ...

81. Candice Bergen

Actress | Miss Congeniality

One cool, eternally classy lady, Candice Bergen was elegantly poised for trendy "ice princess" stardom when she first arrived on the '60s screen, but she gradually reshaped that débutante image in the '70s, both on- and off-camera. A staunch, outspoken feminist with a decisive edge, she went on to ...

82. Edgar Bergen

Actor | Fun & Fancy Free

Edgar Bergen was born on February 16, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Fun and Fancy Free (1947), The Muppet Movie (1979) and Letter of Introduction (1938). He was married to Frances Bergen. He died on September 30, 1978 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

83. Lizzy Caplan

Actress | Hot Tub Time Machine

Actress Elizabeth Anne "Lizzy" Caplan was born in Los Angeles, California, to Barbara (Bragman), a political aide, and Richard Caplan, a lawyer. She has two older siblings, Julie and Benjamin, and was raised in a Jewish household. Her mother was a cousin of publicist Howard Bragman. Caplan was ...

84. Gene Hackman

Actor | The French Connection

Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Anna Lyda Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After ...

85. Natalie Wood

Actress | Rebel Without a Cause

Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.

Wood was born July 20, 1938 in ...

86. Sally Struthers

Actress | All in the Family

Cute as a button and with a petite, porcelain prettiness and vulnerability that endeared her to the American public, Sally Struthers nabbed a series role in the early 1970s and became a solid part of TV history as a member of a dysfunctional family quartet in the milestone sitcom, All in the Family...

87. Dalton Trumbo

Writer | Roman Holiday

Dalton Trumbo, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, arguably the most talented, most famous of the blacklisted film professionals known to history as the Hollywood 10, was born in Montrose, Colorado to Orus Trumbo and his wife, the former Maud Tillery.

Dalton Trumbo was raised at 1124 Gunnison Ave. in ...

88. Noah Baumbach

Writer | The Squid and the Whale

Born in Brooklyn in 1969 Noah Baumbach is the son of two film critics, Georgia Brown and Jonathan Baumbach (also a writer). His studies at Vassar College were the subject of his first film (made as he was 26 years old), Kicking and Screaming (1995). His second major picture, made ten years later, ...

89. Don Ameche

Actor | Cocoon

Don Ameche was a versatile and popular American film actor in the 1930s and '40s, usually as the dapper, mustached leading man. He was also popular as a radio master of ceremonies during this time. As his film popularity waned in the 1950s, he continued working in theater and some TV. His film ...

90. Jessica Chastain

Actress | Zero Dark Thirty

Jessica Michelle Chastain was born in Sacramento, California, and was raised in a middle-class household in a Northern California suburb. Her mother, Jerri Chastain, is a vegan chef whose family is originally from Kansas, and her stepfather is a fireman. She discovered dance at the age of nine and ...

91. Karen Black

Actress | Five Easy Pieces

Karen entered Northwestern University at 18 and left two years later. She studied under Lee Strasberg in New York and worked in a number of off-Broadway roles. She made a critically acclaimed debut on Broadway in 1965 in "The Playroom". Her first big film role was in You're a Big Boy Now (1966), ...

92. Shailene Woodley

Actress | Divergent

Actress and activist Shailene Woodley was born in Simi Valley, California, to Lori (Victor), a middle school counselor, and Lonnie Woodley, a school principal. She has one brother, Tanner. She was educated at Simi Valley High School in California. When Woodley was four years old she began ...

93. James Mason

Actor | Lolita

James Mason was born in Huddersfield and had a film career spanning over 50 years during which he appeared in over 100 films in England and America but never won an Oscar. Whatever role he played, from the wounded Belfast gunman in Odd Man Out to Rommel in The Desert Fox, his creamy velvet voice ...

94. Teri Garr

Actress | Tootsie

Teri Garr can claim a career in show business by birthright. She was the daughter of Eddie Garr, a Broadway stage and film actor, and Phyllis Garr, a dancer. While she was still an infant, her family moved from Hollywood to New Jersey but, after the death of her father when she was 11, the family ...

95. Miriam Hopkins

Actress | Trouble in Paradise

Born into wealth in Savannah, Georgia, on October 18, 1902, Ellen Miriam Hopkins was able to attend the finest educational institutions, including Goddard Seminary in Plainfield, Vermont, and Syracuse University in New York State. Studying dance in New York, she received her first taste of show ...

96. Claude Rains

Actor | Casablanca

William Claude Rains, born in the Clapham area of London, was the son of the British stage actor Frederick Rains. The younger Rains followed, making his stage debut at the age of eleven in "Nell of Old Drury." Growing up in the world of theater, he saw not only acting up close but the down-to-earth...

97. Milos Forman

Director | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Milos Forman was born Jan Tomas Forman in Caslav, Czechoslovakia, to Anna (Svabova), who ran a summer hotel, and Rudolf Forman, a professor. During World War II, his parents were taken away by the Nazis, after being accused of participating in the underground resistance. His father died in ...

98. Viola Davis

Actress | Fences

Viola Davis is a critically revered actress of film, television, and theater and has won rave reviews for her multitude of substantial and intriguingly diverse roles. Audiences across the United States and internationally have admired her for her work- including her celebrated, Oscar-nominated ...

99. Octavia Spencer

Actress | Hidden Figures

Spencer is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, which she claims is the proverbial buckle of the Bible belt. She's the sixth of seven siblings and holds a BS in Liberal Arts from Auburn University. A "closet" lover of acting, this practical Alabamian knew that she'd someday work in the film industry, ...

100. Sean Penn

Actor | Mystic River

Sean Penn is a powerhouse film performer capable of intensely moving work, who has gone from strength to strength during a colourful film career, and who has drawn much media attention for his stormy private life and political viewpoints.

Sean Justin Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the ...